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Despite all of its drawbacks like the obnoxious mobile app pushing and deterioration of communities after they pass a certain size it is still the closest equiv

Despite all of its drawbacks like the obnoxious mobile app pushing and deterioration of communities after they pass a certain size it is still the closest equivalent I know of for the early 2000's forum culture. It is the only social network I know (apart from HN) that does not exclusively deals in bite-sized dopamine hits. Lets hope that the upcoming IPO does not compromise the incentives there.

kumarvvr 5y ago
Agreed, but it doesn't have to. It is addictive as hell. I guess, if you own facebook, you track daily stats and percentages and convert them into insights like "how long are people on the site" or "how many ads to posts ratio do people experience" and FB optimizes for that. I guess, Reddit is still growing enough that it does not have to do such analysis and take any action. Also, the fundamental structure of reddit is different. People search out for sub-reddits and choose to be in them. The dynamic is different. Even in FB, those who spend time in groups, will feel different than browsing through profile posts. While FB is a chore, reddit is an acquired taste. Another important thing I have noticed is that, conversations in reddit, the majority of them, revolve around internet events (a blog post, a picture, an upload, a tweet, a news item, a real world event) and seldom are there any "friends and family" networking stuff happening. If I post a cute pic of my kid, I don't expect my brother to see it and say "my nephew is cute", I expect a honest or sarcastic or angry or jealous discussion, or no discussion at all. The variety of experience reddit provides, is its USP. You can see glimpses of that in Twitter and Insta. A social network pivoted around interests and experiences, rather than friends and family.
toto444 5y ago
There are a lot of dynamic forums out there. Enough for a company (Discourse) to have powering them as their business model. I tend to navigate very niche spaces and I stumble upon forums on a regular basis.

kumarvvr 5y ago

Agreed, but it doesn't have to. It is addictive as hell. I guess, if you own facebook, you track daily stats and percentages and convert them into insights like "how long are people on the site" or "how many ads to posts ratio do people experience" and FB optimizes for that. I guess, Reddit is still growing enough that it does not have to do such analysis and take any action. Also, the fundamental structure of reddit is different. People search out for sub-reddits and choose to be in them. The dynamic is different. Even in FB, those who spend time in groups, will feel different than browsing through profile posts. While FB is a chore, reddit is an acquired taste. Another important thing I have noticed is that, conversations in reddit, the majority of them, revolve around internet events (a blog post, a picture, an upload, a tweet, a news item, a real world event) and seldom are there any "friends and family" networking stuff happening. If I post a cute pic of my kid, I don't expect my brother to see it and say "my nephew is cute", I expect a honest or sarcastic or angry or jealous discussion, or no discussion at all. The variety of experience reddit provides, is its USP. You can see glimpses of that in Twitter and Insta. A social network pivoted around interests and experiences, rather than friends and family.

toto444 5y ago

There are a lot of dynamic forums out there. Enough for a company (Discourse) to have powering them as their business model. I tend to navigate very niche spaces and I stumble upon forums on a regular basis.